The Art of Asking Better Questions
In a world increasingly driven by quick answers, trending topics, and fleeting attention spans, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Department of Philosophy offers something timeless: the space to explore enduring questions about truth, ethics, existence, and the human condition. While many disciplines at the University rightly receive attention for their high-tech or scientific achievements, the philosophy department quietly cultivates a kind of intellectual depth that is no less vital, perhaps even more so in today’s rapidly changing world.
The department is compact, with just nine faculty members, but its scope is impressively broad. Covering the full sweep of Western philosophy, from ancient thought to contemporary political theory, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic, faculty also engage with adjacent disciplines like cognitive science, economics, and education. Collaborative research projects have explored everything from the ethics of AI to experimental philosophy on truth-telling and deception, providing students with an unusually rich and varied philosophical education.
Beyond the classroom, faculty occasionally partner with other university departments or reach out to the wider community. Recent examples include hosting a conference for high school students aimed at sparking curiosity about life’s big questions. And while the department avoids overt political activity, its work remains deeply relevant to Israeli society.
Still, the discipline’s impact is not only national, but also profoundly personal. Students often pursue philosophy alongside another discipline, seeing their studies as a kind of enrichment. “Undergraduate studies are precious years,” says Prof. Shlomo Cohen, the department chair. “You’re not the CEO of anything yet. You’re still figuring out the world. Studying philosophy is a gift you give yourself.” Many students, he notes, finish their degrees saying that those three years of grappling with the biggest questions were among the most meaningful of their lives. One prominent example: Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, Former Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who holds a degree in philosophy and business management, has publicly credited his philosophical background as more valuable to his leadership role than his training in management.
Far from being an impractical pursuit, philosophy provides critical tools for the modern world. As technologies evolve and job markets shift unpredictably, the ability to think clearly, reason deeply, and question assumptions becomes more important, not less. Today’s graduates may find themselves in careers that didn’t even exist five years ago. In such a landscape, philosophy offers not a fixed skillset, but an intellectual agility that’s increasingly essential. Prof. Cohen puts it plainly: “Philosophy doesn’t prepare you for a specific job, but precisely because of that, it may prepare you better than anything else.”
The department is also acutely aware of the challenges posed by modern media culture. With many students arriving at university conditioned by short-form content and social media, philosophy asks them to slow down, reflect, and sit with complexity. A first-year course designed to reintroduce students to careful reading and argument analysis helps rebuild what Cohen calls “intimacy with text.” Students learn not just what philosophers said, but how to think through their ideas with precision. “It’s not about finding the bottom line and copying it from your friend’s notebook,” he explains. “It’s about learning how to think.”
Faculty backgrounds reflect this spirit of intellectual transformation. Among them are a former doctor, a lawyer, and academics from fields like computer science and mathematics, all of whom found their way to philosophy through a shared impulse to scratch beneath the surface of things. Their diverse paths enrich the classroom experience and offer students a wide lens through which to view the discipline. This breadth, combined with the department’s rigorous approach, fosters an environment where students not only acquire knowledge but undergo something closer to what Cohen describes as “a spiritual bath.”
Even as humanities departments around the world face declining enrollment, BGU’s philosophy department has held steady. “There’s a constant spiritual need,” the chair says, “even if people can’t always articulate it when they arrive. Philosophy addresses something fundamental.” He doesn’t expect everyone to become a philosopher, but he hopes the department continues to attract those willing to question, to think, and to wonder.
In closing, he recalls a phrase printed on a T-shirt: “Philosophy: We answer your questions” which is crossed out and replaced with “We question your answers.” It’s a slogan with a smile, but also a serious truth. In an age where answers are instantaneously available, it is the rare ability to ask better, deeper questions that sets BGU’s philosophy department, and its students, apart.
Prof. Shlomo Cohen, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, specializes in philosophical ethics, with a focus on the interface of normative and applied ethics. His research explores inter alia the ethics of respect, truthfulness and deception, informed consent, the nature, justification, and boundaries of moral and political obligation, bioethics and environmental ethics. His book The Concept and Ethics of Manipulation (Cambridge University Press) came out in 2025. In addition to his academic work, he continued to practice medicine for years, a dual vocation that enriched his philosophical inquiry with lived ethical experience.
